HSBC customer service to children

EarthBoy

If the payee really was a dissolved company, wouldn't their bank account have been closed?

Marchitiello

EarthBoy said:

If the payee really was a dissolved company, wouldn't their bank account have been closed?

Not necessarily until the bank do not initiate a review if the directors have not completed the liquidation of assets and/or initiated the account closure 

born_again

Something came up on J Vine (radio 2) today on this gaming site (will be able to listen to on BBC sounds.
https://www.roblox.com/

Which was designed for under 13's but as ever the undesirables have got in & are doing stuff they should not. So again something @teebaks may like to look at in terms of the phone used to see if there is any activity. 

elsien

I don’t think there’s an issue with putting the name of the company on here for people to look at the background. As long as you’re not saying anything potentially libellous about them. Fairly sure I’ve seen it on other threads.

EarthBoy

elsien said:

I don’t think there’s an issue with putting the name of the company on here for people to look at the background. As long as you’re not saying anything potentially libellous about them. Fairly sure I’ve seen it on other threads.

Can dissolved companies sue for libel?  If they've been dissolved, they no longer exist.  The directors could sue if you libel them personally, but not the company itself.  

teebaks

Thank you all for your comments. I went into HSBC yesterday with my niece to give me permission so that the bank will be able to discuss this issue with me directly. 

My findings 

The permission will take up to 10 day. This was not mentioned by HSBC during any of my conversations until I got to the branch.

Customer service at the branch was unable to reopen this case and sent a message to another team requesting this case to be reopened

HSBC Executive just supported the decision originally made by the fraud team without providing any evidence or reasons behind this.. I have requested a detailed report with evidence and will not give up until I get to the bottom of this incident. whatever happened is still unknown and will not want this to happen again without any preventive actions in place.

The name of the account holder where the money was transferred to is FIRMA HANDLOWO USL’ money transferred using the reason ‘Friend (customer m BP)’

Below is the response from HSBC

The payments were made using existing security credentials and the same device was used and no security breaches have been found, making it extremely unlikely for a third party to gain access and make payments in this manner.

Due to the multiple levels of security we’ve built into our Mobile Banking log on process and the information you provided, it is unlikely that your security credentials would be known by anybody without your knowledge. It was for this reason that we were unable to provide you with a refund.

Having reviewed this matter further, I regret I’ve come to the same conclusion, and I am unable to find a reason to overturn our original decision to not provide a refund. I appreciate this won’t be the outcome that you hoped for, but I can confirm our Fraud Operations Team have fully investigated the case. I understand a final response was previously issued regarding the matter on 10 November.

I understand that you’re unhappy with this outcome but I confirm that this remains our final position on this matter.

As detailed in our previous letter of 6 December 2022 you have the right to refer the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge, but you must do so within six months of the date of that letter. The Ombudsman is the independent body that looks into disputes between consumers and financial businesses. It looks at what’s happened and gives an independent view on the situation. For further information please refer to www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

Zuzi

I just wanted to remark that the "name" of the company to me, a basic Polish speaker, looks like just a description of the type of the company, the actual name would follow thereafter or be much longer. FIRMA HANDLOWO USL is bound to be abbreviation for FIRMA HANDLOWO USLUGOWA which just means "a company dealing in trade and services" in Polish.

If it was me and this was all I had by way of who received the money, other than some Polish association I wouldn't know how to research them further. I hope this is all clarified soon for you and your niece.

born_again

Zuzi said:

I just wanted to remark that the "name" of the company to me, a basic Polish speaker, looks like just a description of the type of the company, the actual name would follow thereafter or be much longer. FIRMA HANDLOWO USL is bound to be abbreviation for FIRMA HANDLOWO USLUGOWA which just means "a company dealing in trade and services" in Polish.

If it was me and this was all I had by way of who received the money, other than some Polish association I wouldn't know how to research them further. I hope this is all clarified soon for you and your niece.

The address is also a private house with 34 other companies registered to it. 

Ducers being one that is on a sign on the house.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07942922

What's betting they all use the same bank account.

WillPS

I'm very interested in the specific nature of this fraud, although I have to say it seems unlikely given what we know that your niece was not involved in the transaction.

If there was a hole in HSBC's security it seems mightily unlikely they'd use it for such a slight (in the grand scheme of things) and detectable fraud.

Appreciate this is an emotive subject but the best way to help your niece is to get her to feel comfortable sharing the truth with you, perhaps help her to understand that lots of people lose money, often way more than this and no doubt in simpler scams too. Maybe getting to the truth will illuminate a path to getting her money back.

Marchitiello

Now that we have full details of the response from HSBC (regarding same
device used and log in security) , the fact that the transactions were multiple, moving from saving to current account and then transferred out to a third party, again as a dad of a 13yo (going 14 in not too long), I think the OP needs to realise that the only way forward is to get her niece to talk about what she has done and how to avoid it in the future. 

Maybe I would tell her that we could take the mobile to an expert that would retrive any lost chat history, deleted messages and /or email to retrieve any info on the third party bank account and before we did that and spent further money on it, it was better that she could come forward.

the level of sophistication required for an hacker to hack the OP niece device, hack the mobile app, make three small transfer and all for £200, does not make any sense at all and I am surprised to be honest that the OP cannot see that.